“I believe that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of man's puny, inexhaustible, voice still talking! ...not simply because man alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because man has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion, sacrifice and endurance.” ― William Faulkner

  I’d spent the early morning hours reading with my focus in the core room, when I’d realized there was one other quest that I could easily complete – the Expand Your Collection quest. All that required was for me to add ten volumes to my library. I’d have thought that would have been completed already (AN: Since I totally forgot about this one) but apparently downloading them to my reader didn’t count – I had to possess the work in a physical state and add it to my actual library. I’d transcribed a few of the more important seeming ones, but I went ahead and spent a couple of hours moving works from a virtual state to a physical one.

  Quest Complete: Expand Your Collection II; Reward: Author Evaluator

  Quest Reissued: Expand Your Collection III – Gather an Additional 50 Books; Reward: Magic Tool Blueprint

  The promised reward for that particular quest had been a “scholar magic item”, and it turned out to be an interesting, if rather obscure one. It was hardly infallible, but it appeared to assess the author of a written work in a couple of ways – only a couple of which had ready equivalents in my own world. It apparently drew on information from the central archive to do so, charting the frequency and absolute number of other works that cited this one, the number of other works produced by the same author, and an overall credibility score apparently meta-generated by the library from comments provided by individual readers. It seemed like it would be helpful in determining how important these works and these authors were considered, and it would also help me identify some of the internal limitations of the works.

  The works I’d brought in had yet to reach a critical threshold of readers to really register with the archives, but comparing the historical works provided by the elves and the orcs, for instance, had been informative.

  The elvish work had many more readers, with The Annotated History of Zaipruniel and Its Glories being cited numerous times and its author having written more than 20 other, related books. Its credibility score was a bit low, though, and the synopsis of its rating suggested both an elf-centric focus and some specific distortions of historical fact to cast the elves in a better light. All-in-all, about what I would have expected.

  Interestingly, the Orcish work had been cited much less, though it was also more recent. More to the point, its credibility score was only slightly higher – apparently correcting some distortions put forward by the elves but omitting parts of Orcish history that were relevant and negative. It was unclear, however, how the biases of the readers were reflected in these assessments. Even so, knowing how the works were regarded and where the potential issues lay was an excellent starting point.

  On balance, the tool was likely to be immensely useful in helping to identify key works in whatever field I was reading about, but the credibility score didn’t seem to necessarily reflect the quality or accuracy of the research, only its perceived value among its reader base. I expected it would be more reliable for less contentious topics, though without a clear sense of which topics were contentious, I was going to have to take it all with a grain of salt.

  Most conveniently, the evaluator functioned as an accessory to the reader I’d been given – bonding neatly to the frame and then offering a thumbnail version of the credibility score and citation count as I hovered over an author’s name or the title of a specific work. The full evaluation wasn’t available unless I actually downloaded the work, which I’d established when I’d downloaded one of the works by Professor Ahmed Keradji – On the Formation of Mountains. That had rather explained his interest in plate tectonics. His work had no similar underlying structure, with his focus being on tremors and volcanoes and their reshaping of the land, as well as reference to several instances of apparent divine intervention resulting in the raising of landforms (if never on the scale of entire mountain ranges). He’d even cited the creation of the sky islands, though there his focus was mostly on mapping where the stone to form them had been taken – the short version being that he thought all of them had been taken from a single mountain range on the continent of Isios, leaving what amounted to a massive valley along its southern reaches.

  His model didn’t seem capable of explaining a lot of broad scale geomorphology, but I couldn’t be sure myself as to the extent that divine creation actually factored into it in this world. I suspected a lot of standard geological processes must still apply, but it was entirely possible I was relying too heavily on my knowledge of how things were thought to work in my old world. For all I knew, eventually I’d be strong enough to create a mountain of my own, though that seemed a rather grandiose aspiration to me.

  Still, I let that fall by the wayside by midmorning, turning my attention to my initial attempts to convey speech through my new bird – the Lesser Mimic Ground-Cuckoo. It was an interesting looking bird; as the name suggested, it was clearly a primarily terrestrial bird, though it was capable of flight. It looked something like a cross between a roadrunner and a pheasant with powerful legs, a long rufous tail nearly as long as its sleek brownish body, a short yellowish crest, and a slightly curved bill that suggested a diet heavy in insects, lizards, and whatever small animals it could catch.

  It was probably good that I was practicing in the privacy of my core room, because me initial efforts were not only unsuccessful, but actively painful to listen to. With its sonic affinity it was actually capable of damaging volumes, and the mimic aspect of it meant it wasn’t limited to natural sounds.

  Left unguided, it was actually mostly silent, though it clucked softly to itself in ways that reminded me of a somewhat agitated chicken. Taking control over the bird was no problem at all, but trying to speak through it was an unintelligible mess. While some of its instincts helped me move it around and even make a few bird noises, none of them applied directly to humanoid speech and the function of its syrinx was unfamiliar enough that modulating the sounds was hard. Couple that with a lack of lips, and my own speech habits didn’t carry over very well. The eidetic memory was helpful, but the experimentation needed to puppet the bird into something even remotely resembling speech was clearly going to be a long and painful process. I wasn’t quite ready to give up on it, but at a minimum it seemed like it would take me weeks and rather a lot of devoted effort to make it work as a mouthpiece for the dungeon. I had the time; I wasn’t as confident that I had the patience.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  By mid-afternoon, I was practically ecstatic to notice that I had a new message coming through on my reader. I released the ground-cuckoo to perch on the tabletop with a pile of seed and a selection of small invertebrates as I had the spectral librarian navigate through the base menus to my new correspondence.

  It turned out to be from a new contact, a Euphisia Pythia, who I was guessing to be an acquaintance of the Keradjis given their shared research institution. It could have been a coincidence, but it seemed unlikely – a connection that she quickly confirmed.

  “To Dungeon Sylvanus:

  I would like to offer my greetings and introduce myself. My good friends and former students, Raina and Ahmed Keradji, brought you to my attention and suggested that we might find corresponding helpful in both our research. My name is Euphisia Pythia, Professor of Obscure Magics at Talendra Academy. They mentioned to me that you may be particularly interested in Fungalmancy and Crystallographic magic. I have a passing familiarity with both fields, though I’m hardly the preeminent expert in either – my own interests lean more towards less common forms of divination having begun many years ago as a haruspex and ornithomancer before entering academia.

  I’d be happy to consult with you and offer you some reading suggestions, though if I knew the focus of your research, I could make more directed recommendations. To start, I might point out that the foremost practitioners of fungalmancy and crystallographic magic rarely call it that, as it’s so integral to their societies that they simply call it magic and consider other branches obscure. For obvious reasons, the preeminent magicians in those fields are found among the Deep Myconids and the Crysmals of the Elemental Plane of Earth. Sadly, few of their works have made it to the archive, but you might begin with Sporomantic Runes of the Deep Myconids and Elemental Magic of the Crysmals. Those are both accounts from adventuring mages who have made the journey to the homes of these beings and managed to return. They may not be wholly reliable, but they are the most detailed works I know on those fields.

  I’d be happy to correspond with you about your specific interests, and of course, I have my own questions about the magic used by a dungeon such as yourself. Sapient dungeons are quite rare and rarely communicate with academics, so you represent something of an opportunity. I’d expect our conversations will be informative, and hopefully advance both of our interests.

  I will await your response.

  Professor Euphisia Pythia”

  Well, that was a very helpful missive in several ways, and I quickly jotted down a response to recognize her help and establish further context. Without going into great detail, I shared that I’d encountered an array that appeared to use crystallographic magic to gather and focus mana flows coupled with fungal runes that seemed to stabilize those flows – and had apparently done so consistently for millennia. My early research had indicated little overlap between the two schools, and I wondered if she had any insights. I suggested to her that it most likely was the work of extraplanar, void-aspected dwarves – conceding how unlikely that must sound. Otherwise, I noted that I’d been awarded skills in both areas as quest rewards and I was looking to learn more about both areas, as well as runic works more broadly. I suspected that would open up more questions for her, and I was hopeful that our correspondence would continue. I offered to answer whatever questions about dungeon magic that I could but noted that I was new to this world and magic in general.

  As soon as I'd sent my response off, I was treated to the completion of yet another quest – one I’d been eagerly awaiting.

  Quest Completed: Contact 3 Other Scholars; Reward: Ventriloqual Speech Skill

  Quest Reissued: Contact 10 Additional Scholars; Reward: Magic Communication Tool Blueprint

  I found myself immediately considering disposing of the Ground-Cuckoo – having been more frustrated by the effort of speaking through it than I’d been willing to admit to myself. I gave immediate attention the new skill, trying to determine how exactly it worked and what limitations it possessed.

  Most immediately, it cost mana to use. It wasn’t a major drain, really, but carrying on any lengthy kind of conversation would become problematic until I leveled up a bit more. Beyond that, it was going to be immediately useful, though I’d still need some practice (and possibly some outside advice). It promised to let me speak – in an audible voice – from any single point in my domain. I could pretend to be an invisible man or have the voice come from a creature or object serving as an avatar, but realistically I was capable of speaking directly into the ear of any being who entered my domain. I imagined that would be deeply unsettling, however, so I’d have to consider my options. I could also customize the voice to sound however I wanted and change it simply with an act of will. It radically increased my ability to mess with adventurers, should I choose to.

  Still, my primary intent here was to enable more direct speech with my non-telepathic visitors, so I’d probably mock up some sort of fake intercom or speaker and cast my voice from there. That would give visitors a place to look and enable me to keep a few cards in reserve. I was looking forward to it, and I promised myself a chat with Glynesha and Orentha later in the day.

  I spent a good part of the afternoon, after downloading those two recommended works, simply messing with my speech skill – able to speak out loud for the first time since I’d arrived.

  I could whisper in adventurers’ ears. I could make creepy noises for atmospheric effect. I could mimic the sound of footsteps. I could project eerie wailing or agonized screams. I experimented with the voice. I could sound like my old body, though that felt actively unnatural to me. I could mimic celebrities much more effectively than when I’d been alive. i could sound like the visiting adventurers – male or female. Hell, I could even beatbox, though I have no idea why I’d ever want to.

  Now, when I snorted in amusement, I actually made a sound and conveyed the tone quite effectively. Still, I wanted to select a new voice - one that was properly reflective of who I was now and who I had always been, and that was tricky.

  I wanted my default voice to sound male and mature. I thought about trying to sound warm and friendly, maybe a bit peppy – but those all seemed wrong as the voice of both a serious scholar and a potentially dangerous dungeon. In the end, I went with something a bit deeper than I had before, not really manipulating my intonation or speech patterns but giving myself a little more gravitas and a bit more gravelly, while still letting a bit of wry humor through.

  I was probably overthinking it but having not been able to speak out loud for better than three months, I wanted my new voice to suit my tastes and my intended functions. I was self-aware enough to at least avoid stealing someone else’s voice – I wasn’t going full James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman, but it wasn’t too far off that either.

  I’d have to keep working on it later, though. Now it was time to get back to work.